Sermon – “Great Grace Was Upon Them All” (Acts 4:32-37)

I want to begin by saying what a privilege I consider it, to be invited into this pulpit on the occasion of your anniversary. Karen and I have just been attending over the last five weeks and it are clear to both of us that God is doing great things in and through this church.

Thirty-three years! Sometimes (especially when my knees are bothering me!), I wish I could go back to the age I was then. But it excites me that many of you were not even a twinkle in your parents’ eyes back then. Thirty-three years! A third of a century—take a moment to think how much has changed in that span of time! I was still using a typewriter thirty-three years ago! Anyone here know what a typewriter is?

Thirty-three years: the tender age of an innocent man who hung dying on a cross. As he cried aloud, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” the curtain of the Temple was ripped in two from top to bottom, the earth shook, the skies darkened, and the world would never be the same again.

It is in the shadow of that event that we meet Jesus’ followers in the book of Acts this morning. In those final verses of chapter 4, Luke gives us one of his little glimpses into the life of the community of believers that had begun to form in Jerusalem. And a remarkable picture it is! The church was barely in its infancy. But just take a look at it. Luke tells us in verse 32, “The full number of those who believed were one in heart and soul… With great power the apostles were giving their testimony … and great grace was upon them all…”

Now I am convinced that Luke, the author of Acts, has given us that amazing portrait of the church for a reason. It’s not like a picture in an art gallery, where you stand and admire it for a few moments and then move on to something else. No, as beautiful and compelling as it is, this picture is really far more than that.

In fact, it is the second little portrait of the church that Luke gives us in the early chapters of Acts. And, just as with the first, he has written it down for us not only to show us what the church was, but also to teach us what the church is both called by Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit to be.

So we can see these verses as a kind of pattern, a model. Not that we’re required to follow it precisely to the letter. But we are to learn from it, to glean principles from it, and then by the Holy Spirit’s power to put those principles into practice. So what are the principles that Luke wants to share with us?

I want to suggest that there are three. And they fall under the headings of community, testimony and generosity.

Community

So, let’s begin with community. We find it right there in verse 32: “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul.” I believe that that description stands in dramatic contrast to so much of what many people are experiencing in our society today. What we see around us again and again is not community but estrangement. It is not connection but alienation. It is not togetherness but a profound loneliness.

It’s more than twenty years since Robert Putnam wrote his book entitled Bowling Alone. In it he detailed the gradual decline over the previous fifty years in community involvement, in everything from political parties and public meeting attendance to membership in civic organizations and social clubs (and that of course includes the church). In the years since he wrote, the decline has become only more precipitous. Social media for an increasing number of people have taken the place of real relationships. We spend more time texting on our cellphones than in face-to-face conversation. And now, to put the icing on the cake, we have covid, which has forced us even further into our own separate cocoons—where we hesitate to give one another a hug or exchange a handshake. Even a friendly smile is obscured by a mask.

All of this stands in stark contrast to God’s plan. You only have to read two chapters into the Bible, where God has just created the universe in all its complexity out of nothing. Each day God brings more and more things into being—sun, moon and stars, dry ground and seas, plants and trees, animals and birds and fish in all their endless profusion. And at the end of each of those days, what is the chorus that we hear? “And God saw that it was good.” “And God saw that it was good.” “And God saw that it was good…”

Then we turn the page and we read of God forming the first human being from the dust of the earth. God looks down once again upon the creation he has made, but this time what does he say? Not, “It is good,” but, “It is not good…” “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

You see, God has created you and me for community. And when God begins to bring about his new creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and through the gift of the Holy Spirit, what is one of the first things we begin to see happening? Community.

And an amazing community it was—a community where people saw themselves as belonging to one another. Years later the apostle Paul would reflect on this and write about the church as a body, where feet and hands, eyes and ears and noses (not to mention all our internal organs) are all interconnected and interdependent.

“Community,” wrote Henri Nouwen, “is not a human creation but a divine gift…” But it doesn’t just happen spontaneously, Nouwen warned. “[It] calls for an obedient response. This response may require much patience and humility, much listening and speaking, much confrontation and self-examination, but it should always be an obedient response to a bond which is given and not made.”[1]

I believe that one of the greatest challenges facing the church in our western society today is to be that kind of community, where the self-giving love of Christ is visibly and tangibly present. I believe that’s what many people are looking for in our society today. And I believe that when it happens people will flock to it like bees to a honeypot.

Testimony

If the first mark of the church was community, then the second was testimony. Luke tells us in our passage this morning that “with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus”.

Now it may have been the apostles who were tasked with proclaiming the good news about Jesus at the beginning. But that did not last for long. We have only to turn to chapter 8 of Acts to read that it was ordinary believers who carried that good news beyond the confines of Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria and eventually into the farthest reaches of the known world. I love the way Eugene Peterson put it in his translation of the Bible: “Forced to leave home base, the Christians all became missionaries. Wherever they were scattered, they [proclaimed] the message about Jesus” (Acts 8:4).

I remember when Karen and I were in Libya in north Africa, strolling through the ruins of a Roman city that had flourished a century or two after the time of Christ. Those were years when being a Jesus-follower was still forbidden by the powers-that-be and Christians were severely persecuted for their faith. Yet, scratched and carved into rocks and walls, I could spot an “ichthus” here and a Chi-Rho there. I have to tell you, it was a deeply moving experience to stand in front of that silent witness of my Christian forebears, who would not be stopped from sharing their faith. Could they have imagined in all their wildest dreams that nearly two thousand years later their message would still be visible?

Those early believers were simply practising what they had learned from the example of people like John: “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you…” (1 John 1:3). They were convinced of what the great evangelist Paul had declared years before. Like him, they were not ashamed to proclaim the good news about Jesus, “for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). And they could not be kept silent.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that you start carving Christian symbols into walls. Or that you start buttonholing people on the streets. But what I am saying is that we cannot be silent. And in that regard we need to take to heart the wise advice of the apostle Peter. “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…” (1 Peter 3:15)

I believe that what Peter was recognizing in that verse was that the Christian message is most commonly and most effectively communicated in the context of relationships. It’s when people are able to see the difference that Jesus makes within our lives that they begin to ask questions. And then we have an opportunity, not to cajole or coerce or to get into some kind of sales talk, but to allow the Holy Spirit to speak through us.

Generosity

So, we have community and we have testimony. Which brings us to the third characteristic that we see in those early believers, which was generosity.

If we are to believe what people report on their income tax returns, we Canadians are not a generous society. Taken as a whole, Canadians give just 1.6% of their overall income to charity; and half of those who do contribute give less than $200 annually.[2]

Now I recognize that you can’t measure everything in dollars and cents, and that generosity can be expressed in a whole variety of ways. But the generosity that we see in that first body of believers in Acts was an extravagant generosity. It is the generosity that Jesus talked about: “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, pouring into your lap” (Luke 6:38). For it is the generosity of God, who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all and now graciously gives us all things (Romans 8:32).

I remember a wise friend of mine once saying that when people met Jesus, they moved from being centripetal—that is, where they see everything in their world as spinning inwards towards them—to being centrifugal, where everything flows outwards for the benefit of others. He gave the example of Zacchaeus, the miserly tax collector in Luke’s gospel. Zacchaeus had spent his whole life squeezing the last penny out of the hapless citizens of Jericho. But after meeting Jesus it was as though he couldn’t give enough away. And it wasn’t though he did it grudgingly or because Jesus had been guilting him out or twisting his arm. He did it willingly, joyfully, extravagantly.

The same was true with the little Christian congregation in Corinth a generation later. When they heard that their fellow believers in Judaea were going through a hard time because of a drought, they gave generously. They could be generous because they had experienced God’s generosity in Jesus. “Though he was rich,” wrote Paul, “yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). So it was that Paul could urge them not to give “reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7-8).

It is important at this point to remind ourselves that generosity is far more than money. What I am talking about is an attitude of generosity that colours every area of life—a whole culture of generosity, of extravagant open-heartedness, of joyful largesse, that permeates every aspect of the whole Christian community. I am convinced that where this happens there is little that could be more attractive to an unbelieving world.

Let’s leave it there, then, with those three thoughts in our mind: community, testimony and generosity. And as we move into our thirty-fourth year, may the Holy Spirit so move among us that Jesus may have all the glory. Amen.

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[1]     Henri Nouwen, Community

[2]       https://afpglobal.org/sites/default/files/attachments/generic/WCDW2021.pdf

Sermon – “The Wind Blows Where It Wills” (Acts 2:1-4)

 

It’s probably been a long time since you were in a room with a hundred and twenty people. But I want you to do your best to imagine it anyway. You might even need to close your eyes for a moment—as long as you promise not to fall asleep!

The scene I want you to form in your minds is, of course, the upper room in Jerusalem. There Jesus’ followers had been gathering ever since the day he had been taken up into heaven. You may recall that he had left them with the command to wait for the gift the Father had promised, when the Holy Spirit would come upon them.

Luke tells us that they had faithfully followed Jesus’ instruction, joining together constantly in prayer. Ten days had now elapsed. It was the festival of Pentecost, seven weeks after the celebration of Passover. And next to Passover it was the biggest holiday of the year, marking the beginning of the barley harvest. You might think of it as a little bit like Thanksgiving, with people travelling from all over the empire to celebrate.

The big difference was, though, that instead of going back to their family homes, everybody came to Jerusalem. So the city was chock-a-block with people. And as a result the upper room must have seemed like something of an oasis—even with a hundred and twenty people packed into it!

Then something strange began to happen. Suddenly from out of nowhere the quiet murmur of prayer was overwhelmed by the roar of a violent wind. We’re not talking about a gentle spring breeze here or even a howling gale. Think Dorian. Think Juan. Now start multiplying. This was a wind that tumbles down trees. This was a wind that churns up waves that tower over the masts of ships. And Luke tells us that the roar of it filled every corner of the house where the hundred and twenty were assembled.

What could it all mean? I can only imagine that those first believers were utterly mystified. I know if I had been there I would have been shaking right to the marrow of my bones!

At the beginning of creation (Genesis 1:2)

But let’s stand back for a moment and from the safe distance of nearly two thousand years and let’s try to gain an understanding of what was happening on that Pentecost morning. Because what those first believers were experiencing was in fact just part of a much larger story. So over the next few minutes I want us to try to capture a view of that broader picture—and that will begin by going all the way back to the opening verses of the Bible.

There we are confronted by a remarkable picture. It is one that our human minds really aren’t capable of conceiving: absolute nothingness. The author of these verses uses the words “formless and void”—utter, impenetrable darkness. Yet over it all we find the Spirit of God. The words in Hebrew are Ruach Elohim.

Now that word ruach can mean not only “spirit”, but also “breath” or “wind”. So it is that one translation of this verse runs, “The wind of God swept over the face of the waters.”

Now if you’re a gardener like me, wind is not always a welcome phenomenon. In fact, it can be downright annoying. It’s the wind that blows the snow into three-foot drifts that I have to plow to get my car onto the street in the winter. It’s the wind that blows down the leaves from the trees in the fall and playfully scatters them all over the lawn so that I have to spend hours raking them up.

But the wind of God—Ruach Elohim—is just the opposite. As the ruach sweeps powerfully over the waters, order appears out of chaos. From the swirling formless plasma there begin to appear earth and sky; land and seas; trees and plants; sun, moon and stars; fish and birds and land animals. Then finally, bearing God’s own image, human beings. And like an artist standing back and looking at his work, the Bible tells us that “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”.

So it is that a primary work of the Holy Spirit is to bring order out of chaos, beauty out of confusion. And that was exactly what was happening in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost.

Just try to put yourself into the minds of the disciples for a moment. Their lives had been a roller coaster. Just eight weeks before, they had been surrounded by a cheering crowd waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna to the king!” as they made their way into Jerusalem. Five days later they had stood by helpless as they watched the one they had come to believe was their saviour hang dying on a cross as a convicted criminal. Then on the third day after that they had had to get their minds around the fact that the same man they had seen put to death was alive. And yet, while little doubt may have remained on one level, what were they to make of it? What did it all mean?

Enter the Holy Spirit, to bring order out of chaos, to make sense out of what in the eyes of the world would have been (and for many still is!) nonsense.

On the shore of the Red Sea (Exodus 14:10-22)

On to another scene now, this time with the Hebrew people on the banks of the Red Sea. It had been a dramatic time for them. They had lived through the long series of plagues that had afflicted the kingdom of Egypt. And then the worst had struck, taking in its wake the firstborn son in every Egyptian family. But it was this final tragedy that had led to the fulfilment of what had seemed an impossible dream. It was what allowed them to escape from their life of slavery in Egypt and find a land that they could call their own.

They had set up camp near the shore of the Red Sea, when word came to them that the Egyptian army was just over the horizon. Needless to say, they were panic-stricken. “What have you done to us?” they shouted at Moses. “Better to have been slaves than to be slaughtered like animals!” As the sun set, a powerful wind began to blow from the east. It blew all night, so that when daylight returned, the sea had dried up and the Hebrews were able to cross over into safety. As we all know, the Egyptian armies were not as lucky. Their horses and chariots bogged down in the soft ground and before they could escape, the sea had rushed back into its place.

And here we have a picture of a second work of the Holy Spirit: to bring hope into an atmosphere of despair, victory in the face of defeat. That too must have been the experience of Jesus’ followers in the upper room. Yes, they knew that Jesus had been raised from the dead. But realistically what was going to happen to them? Would they remain a tiny cluster of devotees who clung together around some fond memories? It wouldn’t surprise me to find that they were still locking the doors for fear of being found out by the authorities.

But now there was no longer any need for fear (or indeed any possibility of secrecy), as the Holy Spirit caused the sound of their joy-filled praises to flood out onto the street below.

In the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

There is a third scene that I want to share, that underlies the events of Pentecost. It comes in what to me is one of the most arresting passages in all of Scripture—in a vision that God gave to the prophet Ezekiel.

Ezekiel tells us that he is led by the Spirit of the Lord (and once again it is that same word, ruach—breath, wind) to find himself standing in the middle of a valley—a valley full of bones. Countless numbers of parched and whitened bones surround him in every direction that he cares to look. As he gazes around at this scene of desolation, God puts the question to him, “Can these bones live?” Then God instructs him to command the bones, “Dry bones, this is what the Sovereign Lord says… ‘I will make breath enter you (and here again it is that same word, ruach), and you will come to life…’ ”

Hardly have the words left Ezekiel’s mouth than he begins to hear a rattling sound as the bones come together. Soon they are being covered with tendons and flesh and skin. But Ezekiel observes that there was no breath, no ruach, in them. Again God tells Ezekiel to prophesy, “Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.” As he does so, they raise themselves to their feet. And God gives Ezekiel the promise, “I will put my Spirit in you and you will live…”

Thus we see a third work of the Holy Spirit: to bring life where there is death. History tells us that, of the eleven apostles in that upper room, all but one would suffer a martyr’s death. But they would go to their deaths in the firm conviction that there was nothing that could separate them from God’s love in Christ. In the words of their future co-worker Paul, “He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” (Romans 8:11)

As a result, they would go to their deaths in the comfort of the Spirit-implanted conviction that nothing could separate them from Jesus’ love. In Eugene Peterson’s rendering of Paul’s words, “The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less” (2 Corinthians 5:5).

One night in Jerusalem (John 3:1-8)

Let’s shift now to one further scene. It’s a starry night in Jerusalem. Two figures can be seen in deep discussion. “Rabbi,” says one, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God…” To which he receives the enigmatic reply, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

“But how is this possible?” Nicodemus asks. “How can someone be born when they are old?” And Jesus replies, “The wind blows where it wills. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

On this festival of Pentecost we remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit continues at work today—in the midst of a confused and increasingly confusing world, in the midst of military wars and culture wars, in the midst of a growing environmental crisis, in the midst of a global pandemic—to bring the assurance that there is a God who reigns over all and whose good and perfect purposes will come to fruition—and that Jesus Christ has won the victory over sin and evil and death.

But it remains to you and to me to catch the wind—to allow God’s Holy Spirit to blow in us and through us. It will be unsettling. And no doubt he will rearrange your life a little. Perhaps more than a little! But the adventure will be worth it…

Sermon – “They Wanted to See” (Luke 18:35 – 19:10)

During my years in active pastoral ministry a large proportion of my reading was taken up with biblical, pastoral and theological works. So, one of the goals that I set for myself in retirement was to read more fiction. I have to admit that thus far I haven’t managed to live up to that resolution in quite the way I’d hoped. But it has been a delight to be introduced to characters from a whole variety of places and periods and to share (if only for a brief period of time) in their worlds and their experiences.

One of those characters was a young French teenager named Marie-Laure Leblanc. Her story takes place in German-occupied France during the Second World War. Her world is one of darkness, not only because of the Nazi invasion and the horrors of war, but because Marie-Laure is blind. As I lived with Marie-Laure and shared in her adventures and in her world of sightlessness, I didn’t want the story to end. For me it was one of those books you wish would go on forever.[1]

In the real world, though, blindness is an affliction I hope that none of us would wish on anyone. On the other hand, I have been privileged to know a few people who were blind over the course of my ministry. And I have to say that in every case they were able to meet their circumstances with a remarkable perseverance and a determination to live life to the fullest, in spite of their loss of sight.

Sadly, such was not the case in the world that Jesus and his followers inhabited and where blindness was much more common than it is today. It could be a condition of birth, as we see in the man whom Jesus sent to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam (John 9:1-7). It could also be the result of a variety of diseases, even something as easily treatable as pinkeye. And then there was the blindness of old age, usually due to cataracts and aggravated by repeated exposure to sand and the fierce glare of the Middle Eastern sun.

To make matters worse, no effective treatment was available to those who suffered from diseases of the eye. There were no antibiotics and no safe or effective surgical procedures. In my research for this morning’s sermon, I did come across a form of surgery for cataracts that was known in the ancient world, called couching. (If you’re at all squeamish, you may want to block your ears for a moment.) Couching involved using a sharp thorn or a needle to pierce the surface of the eye and force the lens downwards until the patient could begin to see shapes or movement. Needless to say, in the vast majority of these procedures the patient ended up totally blind.

It would not be for more than a thousand years after the time of Jesus, in 1268, that eyeglasses first came into use. Another five hundred years would elapse before the founding of the first school for the blind, in 1791. It would be nearly forty years more until Louis Braille invented his system of raised dots so that blind people could read, in 1829, followed four years later by the publication of the Gospel of Mark in raised print—the first time blind people could read the Scriptures for themselves. Another century would pass before the founding of the first seeing-eye dog school. And it was in the late 1960s—within the lifetime of many of us here this morning—that modern laser eye surgery became a possibility.

In spite of all these improvements, blindness remains a daunting affliction. But try to imagine what it must have been like in biblical times!

Bartimaeus

Which brings us to the gates of Jericho, as Jesus and his followers are making their way into the town. By now Jesus’ fame has become widespread and they are surrounded by a large crowd. The commotion is such that you might hardly notice a crouched figure sitting at the side of the road. Luke doesn’t even give us his name—and I suspect that no one in the crowd knew it either. But in Mark’s gospel we find that it is Bartimaeus.

The sound of the crowd piques Bartimaeus’ curiosity, so he tugs at someone’s robe and asks what’s going on. “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by,” comes the reply. So Bartimaeus begins to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Someone in the crowd yells at him to shut up, but that only encourages him to cry out all the louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Then Jesus stops. A silence descends over the crowd, as Jesus asks for the man to be brought to him. “What do you want me to do for you?” he asks. “Sir, I want to see,” comes the reply. “Receive your sight,” Jesus says to him. “Your faith has healed you.” Bartimaeus opens his eyes and there before him he sees the faces of the crowd, staring in amazement. He sees the azure blue of the sky and, flitting back and forth, the birds, whose twitters he could only hear before.

What Bartimaeus and the crowd were experiencing in that moment was a fulfilment of a prophecy spoken by Isaiah centuries before:

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
     and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then will the lame leap like a deer,
     and the mute tongue shout for joy. (Isaiah 35:5-6)

Jesus himself had spoken about it when he read from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue at the beginning of his public ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind…” (Luke 4:18-19). Bartimaeus’ healing was not an isolated incident. It was a sign that the messianic age was dawning. A new era was erupting into the old.

The apostle Paul endured poor vision for much of his ministry. Perhaps he was placing his own experience failing eyesight of into that context when he reflected to his fellow believers in Corinth, “Now we see things imperfectly, as in a poor mirror, but then we shall see face to face.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)

“Dear friends,” wrote the aged apostle John a generation later, “now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)

What happened to Bartimaeus outside Jericho is what will one day happen to you and to me and all of God’s people as we gather with that great crowd from every race, language and nation to stand before the throne of the Lamb and see him face to face. We will be freed of all our infirmities. We will be healed from all our diseases. We will no longer be crippled by the wounds that have been inflicted on us and that we have inflicted on ourselves. We will finally be the people that God intended us to be from the beginning of time, when he declared, “Let us make human beings in our image.” This is the future for which all creation waits with eager longing, what the Bible calls the glorious liberty of the children of God (Romans 8:21)—and it was what was breaking into the present as Bartimaeus stared around and the crowd back at him in stunned amazement.

Zacchaeus

It is an astounding promise. And we could contemplate it for hours. But as Jesus pushed on, so must we. As we do, we find ourselves entering the gates of Jericho. And here we come upon one of the most curious scenes in all of the gospels. Luke points our eyes upwards, into the branches of a sycamore-fig tree.

These trees were common in the Middle East. They were leafy evergreens, growing to a height of as much as twenty metres, with wide-spreading branches, and they produced a small, sweet-tasting fruit several times a year. If you wanted a tree to hide in, they were the perfect choice—and that was exactly what one person in Jericho was looking for.

I suspect that Zacchaeus’ horizontal challenge was the butt of humour in his own day—and it has been ever since. Perhaps there are some of you here who grew up with the old Sunday school ditty, “Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he…” But things were made much worse by the fact that Zacchaeus was a tax collector. And here we need to stop for some historical background.

I don’t think there are many of us today who enjoy paying taxes—particularly at this time of year as we go through the laborious process of assembling T3s and T4s and T4As and charitable receipts and medical receipts and whatever else to send off to Revenue Canada. But the Roman Empire had an entirely different system, and here is how it worked. Local contracts for tax collection in the Roman world were auctioned off to the highest bidder. But the government did not pay them for their work. Instead, the tax collectors charged the taxpayers an additional levy for their services. And in many cases the fees they exacted were extortionate—to the point where at least one wag called them “birds of prey”.[2]

To add to that, in Judea tax collectors were generally regarded as traitors, collaborators with the Roman occupation. Even more, because they had to have regular dealings with the Gentile Romans, they were viewed as unclean, so that in later years it was even forbidden to accept alms from a tax collector. And if all that weren’t enough, Zacchaeus was no ordinary tax collector. Luke tells us he was a chief tax collector.

Yet, all the same, Zacchaeus held something in common with Bartimaeus. For like Bartimaeus, he wanted to see. But in his case it was a problem not of sight but of height. So it was that Zacchaeus bundled together his robes and clambered up the tree. Its leafy branches would have allowed him both to catch a glimpse of Jesus and also to remain hidden from the crowd. And as they say, the rest is history.

Zacchaeus finds himself taking Jesus into his home—and here I have to say I’d love to have been a fly on the wall to hear the conversation that ensued between them. All Luke reveals to us is the conclusion. Yet, whatever the words they exchanged, it seems to me that what happened to Zacchaeus was that he began to see. Not in the way that Bartimaeus had begun to see, but in the way that Jesus wants us all to see.

What do I mean? The explanation comes in what to my mind has to be the most arresting parable that Jesus ever told. It is found not in Luke’s gospel but in Matthew’s. There Jesus gives a picture of the Son of Man seated on his throne with all the nations of the earth gathered before him. And he separates them as a shepherd separates sheep from goats, the sheep on his right and the goats to the left. Then he says to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.”

The sheep are puzzled and they ask, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison and go to visit you?” To which the King replies, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:31-40)

Did you notice what the sheep asked? “Lord, when did we see you … ?” I believe that what happened to Zacchaeus was that he began to see in that sense: to see the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked and the sick—and to see those he had cheated for years, perhaps decades—as he saw Jesus.

And therein lies the challenge for you and for me. May Jesus give us sight—eyes to see as he sees and to discover, in the words of C.S. Lewis, “There are no ordinary people.”[3]

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[1]     Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

[2]     “Publicans”, Oxford Companion to the Bible

[3]     “The Weight of Glory”

Sermon – “Lost and Found” (Luke 15:11-32)

 

One of my greatest delights in the church where I last served in Minnesota was to be part of a group of men who met faithfully every Wednesday morning for prayer, followed each week by coffee and conversation. Both the prayer and the conversation could be pretty free ranging at times. But I have to tell you that over the years that group was a spiritual lifeline for me.

One of the wonderful surprises for me in coming to All Nations five years ago was to discover that there was a similar group here—at least until covid struck. It even met on Wednesday mornings. One of the disciplines we have followed as a group has been to read chapter by chapter through a book that focuses on some aspect of Christian living.

A couple of years ago that book was a slim volume by the late Roman Catholic priest Henri Nouwen, entitled The Return of the Prodigal Son. In the introduction Nouwen tells how he went to the Hermitage, the world-renowned art museum in St Petersburg founded more than 250 years ago by Catherine the Great.

There Nouwen found a comfortable chair and planted himself directly in front of Rembrandt’s famous painting of The Return of the Prodigal Son. Before he knew it, more than two hours had elapsed. After a short break for coffee and conversation with the head of the museum’s restoration department, he returned for another hour until a guard and one of the cleaning ladies silently made it clear that closing time was upon him.

During those hours Nouwen carefully examined and meditated upon each of the figures in Rembrandt’s masterpiece, beginning with the younger son, then moving to the elder son, and finally the father. We don’t have the hours this morning that were at Henri Nouwen’s disposal in the Hermitage. It is a temptation to allow our familiarity with Jesus’ parable to cause us to skim though it quickly. But for the next few minutes I do want us to take some time to meditate and focus our thoughts on the three principal figures in Jesus’ beloved parable.

The Prodigal Son: Repentance

Let’s start with the son. To begin with, we need to remember that this story follows directly on from two others that Jesus had just told, about a lost sheep and a lost coin. As with the stories of the coin and the sheep, the parable of the prodigal son is also about being lost. But with the son there is a difference. The sheep and the coin were lost through no fault of their own. The sheep had been so busy munching on its own little patch of grass that it hadn’t noticed when the others had been herded back into their paddock for the night. And we would be silly to blame the coin for having been mislaid or dropped or whatever caused it to be missing from the woman’s purse.

But the case of the son stands apart. His lostness was not something that just happened to him. Rather, it was the direct result of his own rebellion and self-centredness. His demand to receive his share of the family estate amounted to treating his father as though the old man had already died. It was an act of consummate disregard for the feelings and the welfare of others. It is likely that his father’s assets were tied up in the form of land and livestock. Was the son really expecting his father to liquidate them and live on just a share of his income for the rest of his life?

Jesus doesn’t bother to delve into details like that or to psychologize. He didn’t need to. His listeners would have been filled with indignation at the brazenness of the son’s demand. And when the son ends up among the pigs longing to eat their slop, I can imagine them muttering under their breath, “Serves him right, the selfish twit!”

Indeed there would have been a certain justice to it if the story just ended there. The camera fades off into the distance with the son lying in rags in the filth of the pigs. But the son has a change of heart. Our Bibles say he came to his senses. Jesus’ words quite literally are, “He came to himself.” It seems to me that perhaps for the first time in his life the son was able to stand outside himself. He began to see himself objectively for the selfish, heedless good-for-nothing that he was.

(And here I can’t help but be reminded of those famous lines from Robbie Burns:

Oh, would some Power the giftie gie us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us.)

However, if repentance is to be genuine, there needs to be more to it than that. It is not just a matter of gaining a new perspective. It is a change of heart and life. As Pastor Dave made very clear in his sermon last week (and here I quote): “Repentance is both remorse and changing our lives… Remorse is feeling badly for what we did … seeing things the way the offended person sees things. But repentance means that then we need to turn away from what we did. Remorse isn’t enough… We need to change.”

So it was that with a heart made heavy by the realization of his own waywardness and the hurt he had caused, the son swallowed whatever pride he still had left and began the journey home.

The Waiting Father: Reconciliation

At this point Jesus shifts the scene back to the family homestead. There we see the father, no doubt appearing somewhat older and wearier through the loss of his son. Perhaps he is a little stooped and frail. We can imagine him at dawn getting up and gazing with sadness towards the horizon where he had last seen the son’s departing figure.

Imagine his surprise one morning when far in the distance he spots a figure that looks hauntingly familiar. Can it be? Are his aging eyes playing tricks on him? But as the figure moves closer all doubts are erased from his mind. Barely able to see though his tears, he hastily straps on his sandals, tucks in his robes and, as quickly as his stiff legs can carry him, he runs down to the road to embrace his son.

Helmut Thielicke was a great scholar and preacher of the mid-twentieth century. He maintained that the central figure in Jesus’ parable was not the son at all but the father. For the story is as much about reconciliation as it is about repentance. Imagine if the son had journeyed all that way only to be met with rebuff by his father: “You were my son but you are no longer. Go back to your reckless living and to your pigsty! It’s where you belong.”

If that were the end of the story, we could not deny its justice. But Jesus’ aim is not to give us a lesson about justice. It is to tell us about grace. The father is the God about whom we read in the book of Daniel: “To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against him” (Daniel 9:9). And the prophet Ezekiel puts it even more passionately: “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:10-11).

So it is that Thielicke could write:

The joyful sound of festivity rings out from this story. Wherever forgiveness is proclaimed there is joy and festive garments. We must read and hear this gospel story as it was really meant to be: good news! News so good that we should never have imagined it. News that would stagger us if we were able to hear it for the first time as a message that everything about God is so completely different from what we thought or feared. News that he … is inviting us to share in an unspeakable joy. The ultimate secret of this story is this: There is a homecoming for us all because there is a home.[1]

The Older Brother: Recalcitrance

It’s all a wonderful story. And as those who have turned to Christ in faith we have the assurance of God’s full and free forgiveness and the promise of an eternal place in his presence. But wait! There is more to be told. Jesus hasn’t finished yet. In Rembrandt’s famous painting a tall figure stands off in the shadows to the side. His hands clasped, he looks down coolly on the scene that is unfolding in front of him.

He is the older brother.

He has been out working in the fields. In the distance he has heard music and dancing and joyful laughter. As he nears the house his nostrils are filled with the rich aroma of a fatted calf roasting on the spit. His outrage is such that he cannot bring himself to step through the door. When his father pleads with him to come in and join the party, his cool silence quickly explodes into a furious outburst. Years of pent-up anger and resentment pour out like a flood bursting through a dam.

At this point let’s take a moment to stand back from the story and look at it objectively.

Surely the older brother had every right to be upset. He had been a dutiful son for years and had never received a whit of recognition for it. Where was the fairness in that? Where was the justice?

Now if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that he has a point. And here I want to suggest that it is not the penitent son who is the central figure in Jesus’ story. Nor is it the forgiving father. Rather, it is this son, who stands outside the party room, his feet firmly planted, his arms firmly folded in a well-justified huff.

Why do I think he is the central character? Take a moment to look at Luke’s introduction to Jesus’ parables:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

Do you see who Jesus’ audience was? It was all older brothers, people who had spent the greater part of their lives fastidiously seeking to live in obedience to God, right down to the minutest detail. If they weren’t the very definition of older brothers, I can’t imagine who is. And if I’m honest with myself, I am forced to confess that I am one of them too.

Yes, I will freely admit that I am a sinner. I acknowledge that my only claim on God’s salvation is by his grace and through faith in Jesus Christ. Yet I also have to confess that in the course of my years in the family of God I have in many ways adopted the attitudes and perspectives of an older brother. It’s not as though it’s intentional. For the most part it happens gradually and imperceptibly. But it happens none the less—so that I can become critical and judgmental in my attitude towards others, so that I am keener on justice and retribution than I am on mercy and reconciliation. And before I know it, I’m standing outside with my arms folded, while the party’s going on over there.

Yet the most wonderful thing of all is that Jesus leaves the parable open-ended. He does not consign the older son to living outside for the rest of his life in a perpetual state of indignation. It is as though Jesus is saying to all who will hear, “Now over to you…”

How subtly a religion of works can overtake the liberty of grace! How frighteningly easy it is to slip from being a younger brother to an older one! Yet the father’s invitation is there for us all. Is it any coincidence that almost the last words of the Bible are these?

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. (Revelation 22:17)

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[1] Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father, 29